Many types of input devices may be used to provide input to computing devices, such as buttons or keys, mice, trackballs, joysticks, touch screens and the like. Touch screens, in particular, are becoming increasingly popular because of their ease and versatility of operation. Typically touch screens can include a touch sensor panel, which may be a clear panel with a touch-sensitive surface, and a display device that can be positioned behind the panel so that the touch-sensitive surface substantially covers the viewable area of the display device. Touch screens allow a user to provide various types of input to the computing device by touching the touch sensor panel using a finger, stylus, or other object at a location dictated by a user interface being displayed by the display device.
In general, touch screens can recognize a touch event and the position of the touch event on the touch sensor panel, and the computing system can then interpret the touch event in accordance with the display appearing at the time of the touch event, and thereafter can perform one or more actions based on the touch event. More advanced touch screens are capable of detecting multiple touches simultaneously. In general, touch screens can recognize the position of the one or more touches on the touch sensor panel, and a computing system can then interpret the touches, either individually or as a single gesture in accordance with the display appearing at the time of the touch event, and thereafter can perform one or more actions based on the touch event.
Touch sensor panels can be formed from a matrix of row and column traces, with sensors or pixels present where the rows and columns cross over each other while being separated by a dielectric material. Each row can be driven by a stimulation signal, and touch locations can be identified through changes in the stimulation signal. Typically, a touch location is sensed based on an interference of the stimulation signal, such that a touch location may correspond to a location where the stimulation signal is the weakest. Touch sensor panels may generally be configured to detect touches from a user's fingers, which generally have a surface area that contacts the touch sensor panel to disturb the stimulation signal sufficiently for touch location to be recognized.
When a stylus has been used as an input device in a capacitive touch system, the stylus has traditionally been finger-like in nature. A conventional stylus is often simply a conductive rod with a finger-sized rounded tip large enough to disrupt the electric field lines between the drive and sense electrodes of a capacitive touch sensor panel. As such, conventional styluses are passive input devices in that they are incapable of actively transmitting stimulus signals or sensing a touch-induced capacitance change in a capacitive touch sensor panel.
Another type of stylus, the active stylus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 8,928,635, incorporated herein in its entirety, acts as a drive and/or a sense element in a capacitive touch system. Unlike conventional styluses which work passively by blocking electric field lines between the drive and sense electrodes of a capacitive touch sensor panel, active styluses can either act as a drive electrode to create an electric field between the drive electrode and the sense lines of a mutual capacitive touch sensor panel, or as a sense electrode for sensing capacitively coupled signals from one or more stimulated drive rows and columns of the touch sensor panel or both. These styluses can be referred to as active styluses in comparison to conventional passive styluses. These active styluses can significantly improve stylus sensing on a mutual capacitive touch sensor panel without incurring significant additional cost.